Amar Singh accuses Mayawati of corruption, BSP denies charge (Lead)

New Delhi, Jan 11 (IANS) Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh Sunday released a CD containing telephonic conversations of what he claimed to be Bahujan Samaj Party leaders asking cadres to collect money for Chief Minister Mayawati. The BSP has denied the charge.”The CD has details of a sting operation with telephonic conversations of various BSP leaders admitting getting money from the party’s national headquarters to convert it into drafts of small amounts in the name of Mayawati,” Amar Singh told reporters.

“These details are also posted on the website www.tiranganews.com, which conducted the sting operation,” Singh said.

The site is part of the Ujala News Network, which runs the Hindi magazine Ujala.

Singh said the CD has details of the bank drafts, including their numbers, the person who got these made and the name of the bank, among other things.

He also distributed a list of the names of 39 people who, he said, were BSP workers, their addresses, draft numbers, the name of the banks and the amount against each name.

The amounts vary from Rs.17,500 to Rs.24,000.

Singh alleged that a total of Rs.20 lakh (Rs.2 million) was collected by senior BSP leaders Tilak Chand Ahirwal and C.P. Singh and handed over to a party leader from Delhi, Suresh Chand, “who was asked to convert the black money into white”.

“The money was then distributed among 39 party workers and local leaders, like corporators of Delhi, and they were directed to make bank drafts in the name of BSP chief Mayawati to be sent to her,” he added.

Singh said all the drafts were issued within a span of 10 days in February 2007 and this was just one instance of how the Uttar Pradesh chief minister “converts her black money into white money”.

Suresh Chand admitted this during his conversation with an undercover reporter of the Ujala magazine, Singh said.

“We demand that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) should scan the bank accounts of Mayawati and other BSP leaders as the money collected in the name of donations for the party is going into Mayawati’s account,” Singh said.

Singh, flanked by party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and his younger brother Ram Gopal Yadav, also demanded that the Election Commission should cancel the recognition of the BSP as a national party as the party had violated its constitution submitted to the poll panel.

A BSP spokesman in Lucknow denied the charge and said it was an attempt to malign Mayawati’s image.